Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 statistics

Freedom of Information Act 2000 Request

Please can you tell me how many people have been charged with offences under the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 since its introduction in May? (If you are not able to give me the number of people charged, but can tell me the total number of charges instead, I would be happy to accept that as an alternative.) Can you also give me a break down of the charges ie possession with intent to supply, importation, offering to supply etc.

Please can you also tell me how many of those were in prison at the time of the offence and give me the same break down of offences? Can you also tell me the sex and age of the person charged?’

In response to your request, please see Attachment 1 which gives a table of data showing the number of offences brought by way of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 for the period May to September 2016 (a quarter in arrears as per Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) policy). Please refer to the caveats which apply and are appended to this table.

There were 18 offences prosecuted in this period which are associated with 17 cases. I have undertaken a manual review of the 17 CPS case files in order to ascertain the more detailed information you have requested and this information appears in Attachment 2. Please note I have anonymised the ages of the persons involved to protect their personal data.

Information Management Unit 020 3357 0899 FOI.Unit@cps.gsi.gov.uk